Completely Unacceptable

Just my opinion.

Former Vice President, and Current Presidential Candidate Joe Biden insulting a 21 year old student on national television is demonstrative of Candidate Biden’s lack of qualification.

The young person asked a legitimate question.

Joe Biden demonstrated with one sentence why he does not deserve to be President of The United States.

You’re a lying, dog faced pony soldier.

bidenblowsit3.pngFirst of all, what the hell does that even mean?

At Joe Biden’s age, he should understand that he’s essentially interviewing for a job. He should also be able to answer a direct question;

How do you explain the performance in Iowa, and why should voters believe that you can win the national election?

Rationally and courteously, instead he asked an irrelevant question then resorted to bullying and dismissiveness as his response.

His campaign has tried to brush this off as a joke. Did he apologize? Did he make any attempt to answer the question, or indicate that he was joking? No? He wasn’t joking. 

Even more disturbing is that the crowd laughed. Someone, ANYONE in that crowd should have stood up and called him out on his behavior. 

This man is nothing special, he’s not a god, he doesn’t have to power to have someone arrested for speaking out against what is clearly an inappropriate response to a young voter.

This is not to say that the young person was incapable of defending themselves but given the circumstances, I could see them needing a moment to regain their balance. 

An older, more experience person should have given them that moment. While reminding Joe Biden that he is choosing to serve the American People. No one is forcing him to run for election. Choosing to serve America, means treating everyone with courtesy and fairness.

This is not the first time Biden has been insulting or dismissive. 

I think it clearly shows us that he is not a candidate worth voting for.  The last thing we need in the Office of The President is another elitist who believes they can do no wrong and  above question or reproach.

It’s time for Biden to throw in the towel. 

Retire Sir. Leave the field while you still have some honor.

Now, can we get back to business?

Trumpnews.jpgIt’s been a week hasn’t it?

Trump delivers a very nice state of the union address. Regardless if you hate him or love him, it was up lifting, positive and heart warming.

Nancy Pelosi demonstrates her frustration and disgust with The President.

Trump is acquitted.

(I’ll bet Nancy was throwing stuff after that vote)

pelosipissed.jpgAnd Trump’s “Victory Lap” was embarrassing.

Mr President, you need to keep your list of enemies private. That way, when they disappear you can shrug your shoulders, maintain plausible deniability, and assign your shittiest investigators to “determine” what happened. On inconclusive results you can say, “I don’t know…”ultimatebs.jpg

When you’re handed a victory, you should just say something like, “It’s as we’ve always maintained, this was a purely political stunt. Now that this matter is cleared up I & the Whitehouse will be able to get back to work.”

You see, that would freak out your enemies far more than letting them know they’re your enemies. They’d never know if or when you were coming for them.

You might want to ask President Putin for some pointers… 

That’s not to imply any collusion between you and Russia. It’s simply acknowledging that President Putin was a spy and there’s no doubt in my mind that he knows how to deal with enemies.

For that matter you might consider hiring some Southerners. My Dad once told me, “If you have a run of really bad luck, look for an enemy.” Which is to say that Southerners have long known how to smile in the face of adversity and then just when their enemies are least expecting it. They put the knife where it can do the most good.

Just a couple of thoughts for your next four years.

OH STOP!

We all know that Trump is going to be The President four more years. The Candidates from the other parties are… Uh, well, Pitiful! Based on what I’ve seen I wouldn’t vote for any of them to wipe my ass.

To be sure, I’ve been looking. For once in my life I’d like to cast my vote not for the lesser of two evils, but for someone that I actually believe in.

You know, someone who’s honorable, dignified, logical, has great personal presence, and who’s in the game for the people, not them self.

I don’t give a shit what color they are, their sexual preference, or gender.

Full disclosure;

I actually agree with some of Trumps opinions and policies. I also agree with some of the Democratic policies. Please remember; I have maintained for years that neither party has all the answers and extreme polarization is not serving the best interest of the American People.

Do I like President Trump? Uhhh rarely. Did I vote for President Trump? Nope. Did I vote for Hillary? Absofuckinglutely NOT!

Had Hillary become President, I’d have seriously considered becoming a citizen of Russia. At least then I’d have known what I was in for.

To her credit though, She apparently knows how to deal with her enemies. Albeit she’s sloppy. The trick is to be able to keep your hands clean. That’s why there are professionals for these sort of things. Erase the drives or tapes, THEN have a terrible fire! Didn’t we learn that with Richard Nixon’s infamous 18 minutes?

The problem with being Machiavellian or implementing Vlad Dracul’s way of governing is that you can’t nibble on the barrel. You have to go all in. You’ve got to commit totally.

As it turns out, few people have the stomach for it.  Which may be why world governments aren’t more fucked up than they are.

I actually see that as a sign of hope. Hey, gotta see the positive where you can…

In other events:

I thought going into this week that I’d extricated myself from a company whose website I’d been maintaining for years.

Uh, NOPE!

I don’t know if it was their intention but they really fucked me up. On the plus side it confirmed that I was on the right course and made the right decision. On the down side every email, & text really pissed me off. Honestly, I had expected it to be difficult because I’d  been too nice.

breakuptxt.jpgI gave them months to prepare. After spending 4 hours on the phone Friday & Saturday with the hosting company it appeared that their website was fully and completely their own. Then, I’m guessing that they got an estimate from a couple of web designers and shit themselves.

After that, they came back at me, trying to guilt and manipulate me into maintaining their site. 

The problem is, that each message pushed me into a rage. So I lost a number of days because I just walked away from the computer and couldn’t look at anything digital. 

I went so far as to shut down all the tech just because I was tired of being needled. Phone, computer, even my apple watch. I do like the simplicity of my good ol fashioned wind up watch.

You’d think that would be a good thing. No Tech for days on end…

Well, yes and no.

Yes, because it’s remarkably quiet and there are fewer distractions.  

No because when you turn the tech back on, your shit explodes with all the missed messages and you’re stuck scanning and deleting all the BS in one long irritating session. (Next time, I’m going to have a whiskey or two while dealing with it.)

After spending yet more time writing a polite email explaining that I wasn’t interested in teaching them HTML, CSS, and JAVA. Wherein I attempted to describe the basic mechanics and suggesting that they use a pretty nice tool they already have, that’s completely graphic and requires no knowledge of HTML. The whole time I was writing this polite email, I was receiving texts that read like those you get during a bad breakup or divorce.

Anyhow, after sending the email, they sent me a snotty response. “Fine,” I thought, “They finally got it.”

The next day they try again to engage me, it almost felt like they were trying to trick me into helping them.

I was walking around the place asking myself, “Was I not clear? Did I write above their reading level? What part of ‘No’ don’t they understand?”

Then I realized they didn’t want to understand what I was saying.

They wanted it to be personal, painful, and ugly. In effect it was a form of bullying. So I just blocked any communications from them. (Thank you Apple!)

I have other things to do. One of which, is living my life on my terms not the whims of others. To do that, I need to not be pissed off all the time.

In retrospect, I should have turned them loose years ago. The very first time they complained about the price.

That’s a lesson/note to self for the future, “If someone bitches about the cost when you know you’ve lowballed it… Walk the fuck away! It’s a losing proposition.”

Today, I’m feeling better. Oddly, I’m not missing them or their bullshit in the least. Go figure!

Now I’m ready to tackle some things I promised real “Friends” and can do so without being annoyed by people who claim to be my friends only when they’re ramping up to ask me for something.

Job Search:

I was trying to rewrite my resume when all the bullshit above was going on. I simply gave up. I’m going to be using the weekend splitting time between it, writing in general, and keeping promises.

There has been no activity at all on the resumes that I’ve already sent. I’m getting down to the wire and fingers crossed I’ll still be able to pull my ass out of the fire.

Hope everyone has a happy weekend.

I’m sure as hell going to try!

If Pelosi is all about obeying the law…

Then she should be ready to pay the price for breaking it.

When Speaker Pelosi tore up her copy of the State of the Union address in full view of the American people and the world, she may have violated the law.

(18 U.S.C. § 2071)

(a) Whoever willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys, or attempts to do so, or, with intent to do so takes and carries away any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.

Of course it would be for the court to decide. There were members of the Supreme court in attendance at that State of the Union address. While they probably would have to recuse themselves from the hearing, they could be called as witnesses.

Speaker Pelosi has said that no one is above the law.

She must now prove that she too is bound by it.

As a citizen of The United States of America, I formally request that an investigation be opened in this matter. Further, if evidence warrants, I request that Speaker Pelosi brought to trial.

 

What? Wait…

IowaCaucus.jpgI was reading about the Iowa Caucus.

The acting DHS secretary Mr. Wolf said that the application issue appeared to be a “Load” issue. By “Load” he means that the servers were unable to keep up with the number of requests.

Okay I’ll buy that is a possibility, if everyone in a state was voting at the same time. But as the number of voters decreased, the server would catch up and post each transaction in turn. If this was the problem then it’s pretty obvious whoever tested the software didn’t do any load testing and quite possibly didn’t do much testing at all.

Lets face it, we’re all familiar with online opinion polls, and I’d imagine the servers handling those are dealing with millions of votes a minute. Seems to me that Shadow (The company that apparently spent 3 years building the software,) would have looked to other examples of voting systems, during their development process.

For god’s sake, there are PORN sites that handle votes for performers without crashing. Given the prevalence of Porn Sites I’d guess they process something on the order of MILLIONS of votes per Second.

Then I read that the application was only for the 170 – 190 precinct captains. So the paper votes were cast, then counted, and the captains were to use an application to input those numbers?

You’re telling me that with 3 YEARS of development no-one ever tested with a measly 200 simultaneous users?

WTF?

As I sit reading more about this, I’m astounded.

I have Apple Time Capsules here in my home that can handle 50 simultaneous users on WiFi.

A low end Dell server purchased from Best Buy could probably handle 250 users from the moment it was plugged in, possibly more if all the server had to do was tally incoming data for ONE Single application.

I have to point out that I’m kinda talking out of my hat here because I don’t have all the facts. So take what I’m saying here with a salt lick.

My point is, that with something as important as votes, if I could put a system together with commercial of the shelf (COTS) equipment for less than 10K in hardware and a little web programming there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for the debacle we saw in Iowa.

Much less so when you factor 3 YEARS of development time.

Hell, with 3 years of development time, I could give you Web and Phone based access, Live updates, and auditing of figures entered by precinct, candidate, and user. Complete with state of the art security. I’d have also taken the DHS up on testing the system too. The DHS has an entire division dedicated to Cybersecurity. 

I’d probably have requested that the FBI and NSA take a look too, if they were willing.

WHY?

Because the product would have to be rock fucking solid and more eyes looking at a system are more likely to find flaws that can be corrected before its debut.

Especially given that over the last four years we’ve heard about nothing but Russian influence in our election process. I’d be wanting to make something that was so secure that there’d never be any question about the veracity of the product or its results.

Make no mistake, this is (or was) a product.

Shadow would have been in a prime position to resell the product to all 50 states and would have been reaping the benefits for decades with maintenance and upgrade contracts.

Now Shadow will fade into the morning light like a bad dream, having made millions (I’m guessing) for its principals and casting everyone below executive level to the unemployment line.

Oh, and they’ll have an added lovely parting gift of FAILED project on their resumes.

As I said, we don’t yet have all the facts and likely, we never will.

Online voting could be a reality. But only if we commit to doing it right. 

Don’t you find it interesting that we have more security in place online and over the phone to deal with our banking needs than we do when dealing with the direction of our country as a whole?

Trump Impeached!

PelosiBig Deal! So What!

Trump is still The President, Mike Pence is next in line. By the time the House gins up enough to impeach Pence, it’ll be 2 years into the NEXT President’s term.

So no, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton will still NOT be President.

Trump is 3 years into a 4 year term. Given the speed with which the House & Senate act, this impeachment process could last beyond Trump’s presidency. 

America, this has all been a dog & pony show. Produced and staged for your amusement to divide the country. 

TrumpDon’t we have bigger issues?

Isn’t our expectation of Congress that they work on governing the country?

Have our expectations dropped so low, or have we become so self involved that we don’t see the fundamental failure of our politicians to do their jobs.

Have the homeless been helped?

Has our healthcare system been made affordable?

Do children in our country go to bed cold and hungry?

Have problems in our primary and secondary educational system been addressed?

Do some families of our military still rely on food stamps to make ends meet?

Does our legal system work uniformly and with equality for all of our citizens?

Do we have a good accounting of just where our tax dollars go and a balanced budget?

Have our power needs, and infrastructure repairs been addressed?

These are the very basic issues our government is supposed to address. Have they been?

Nope, not really.

Instead of our politicians addressing these fundamental issues with intellect and creativity we’ve been distracted and deluded by the “Show” in Washington. 

How much has this cost us? You know “We the People” and for what? What value did we get for that investment? We impeached a President that is 3/4 of the way through his term. Big Deal!

The one truism of any organization, including the US government, is that delay in addressing problems makes the cost increase exponentially over time.

That is what our government has done. They’ve delayed addressing the basics for nothing more than political aggrandizement. Pelosi et al. have won nothing, achieved nothing, and provided no tangible value. 

I point at Pelosi, but the truth is the Republican party is just as much to blame.

The one thing I agree with President Trump about is that the swamp in Washington needs to be drained.  All of it!

There are too many backroom deals, and too much money changing hands that is not in the interest of the American People. The kind of corruption we’re seeing now is like a cancer and it’s spreading.

Washington dc swampWE the People need to pump industrial strength bleach into our government. That is done simply by refusing to vote for the incumbents who have consistently and with, dare I say… Malice, encouraged or allowed the corruption to stand.

No Representative or Senator needs to be in office for a lifetime and we have exactly that situation.

This leads naturally to “back scratching” that shouldn’t be part of our government process.

So when you’re presented with the opportunity to vote in this next election. Vote your conscience not necessarily your party.

The people you vote for should have to earn your vote. Not with promises they’ll never fulfill but with actions, honesty, and integrity. 

In a “cancel culture” such as we now have it should be pretty easy to figure out who’s in politics because they have no other marketable skills.

If the candidate you’re considering is a lawyer who’s never won a case, or a businessman that’s never had a successful business, they’re probably not someone you should hand the reins of the country to.

Just some food for thought.